Welding fume for uncoated and coated copper wire electrodes of high-strength steels

Objective In order to understand the difference of welding fumes between the uncoated copper wire electrodes and coated copper wire electrodes of high-strength steels. Methods The welding fume particles of the wire electrodes for the two kinds of high strength steel were collected by using the welding fume trapping system self-developed by the laboratory. During the collection process, the fume emission rate from wire electrodes GMAW was measured, the composition, morphology, particle size distribution and size of welding fume were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometer, scanning electron microscope, energy spectrometer and laser particle size analyzer. Conclusion The results showed that the fume emission rat of wire electrodes 2 was the lowest, 4.68 mg/s, and the fume emission rate of wire electrodes 4 was the most stability, no obvious influence of different preparation processes on the emission rate of welding fume was found. The average particle size of wire electrodes 3 was the largest, 2.056 μm. There were differences in the particle size distribution of welding fumes generated during wire electrode welding by different preparation processes.In the same welding process, the composition of welding fume was mainly determined by the composition of welding wire, the main elements were Fe, Mn, Si, and the content of Fe was more than 50%. Results Through the comparison and analysis of the test results, we knowed that uncoated copper wire electrodes has certain advantages in the direction of green environmental protection.